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It was a little hard for me to grasp the controls of Bad Company when I started playing, as they do slightly differ from conventional video game controls that I'm used to. Nevertheless I picked it up quickly, and was aboslutely overjoyed to discover the level of absolute destuction you can cause. You have 5 basic classes of guns - Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Light Machine Guns (LMG) and Sub Machine Guns (SMG) - each class has a plethora of different weapons, and there are extras ranging from mortar strikes and grenades to laser designators and a rocket launcher. With you always is an auto injector, to help restore you health - but don't get too worked up, as there is a recharge time. Now, back to the destruction. You can literally rip a building down to it's foundations, which is something that most First Person Shooter games I'm aware of lack. You can blow away the cover of your enemies, forcing them to either retreat or be a sitting duck out in the open. The vehicles that you can have under your command are cajunga - you can have golf buggies, dune buggies, tanks and even helicopters at your disposal, so the possibilities of the havok you can introduce are endless.
Visual: Visually, Bad Company is great. The terrains and detail of the people that you encounter are definitely having lots of thought put into them, and it really shows you how much video game graphics have progressed over the last 10 years. The explosions, though, aren't too special. When you lob a grenade at a wall, it seems like the size of the hole never changes, and the explosions themselves aren't as spectacular as I would have liked. Despite what has been said, there are other parts of how Bad Company looks that brings it to being about average, but overall it's acceptable and looks great. 84/100
Audio: The sounds of Bad Company...ahhhh. You'll hear your squad members make comments during battle, you'll be hearing the cries and screams of your enemies, their commands to each other and you will hear the explosions more than you will see them. The gunshots seem so real, and the audio for Bad Company takes a different approach to that of many other games I have played. The sounds of Bad Company are going to be stuck in your memory, and they'll make you want to turn up the volume to soak it all in. 92/100
Gameplay: The controls of Bad Company, like I mentioned, seem to take a different approach to what I am familiar with in other games. They do seem a bit tricky at first, but they aren't too difficult to pick up, and then master, once you've been playing the game for a few minutes. Sometimes you'll find it hard to crouch under certain things, you just won't be able to jump that fence, your knife won't come out quick enough and your bullets won't go where you want them to. The AI (Artificial Intelligence, also known as your enemies) are almost completely unrealistic and will either pop out of places that will frustrate you or run into danger so foolishly. Nevertheless, the vehicles are easy to control (in most instances), and blowing your way through a couple of houses has never been so easy or enjoyable. 89/100
Multiplayer: I didn't know what to expect when I decided to play online for Bad Company. I was faced with the idea of 'Gold Rush', though. Basically, you have your Attackers and Defenders. The Defenders have to protect the gold crates, and the Attackers have to destroy them. The Defenders win if they destroy all of the attackers reinforcements, and the Attackers win by advancing through the 3 or 4 bases of the enemy, destroying the 2 gold crates at each base - either by planting a charge, or blowing the living daylights out of it. Put simply, I found Bad Company's online play to be...more or less addictive. You will strive to rank up, and you will long for the online achievements. Dogtags can be earned by knifing someone, and you get extra points depending on your victim's rank - and trust me, getting your knife out will never be so much fun. You have several maps to choose from, all of which are ridiculously large, and you can download 2 more for free. The Conquest game mode is also available for free download, but it seems to be based on more of a Capture the Flag concept. 92/100
Achievements: Battlefield: Bad Company presents to you a list of 50 achievements, varying from 15G to the odd 30G achievement. The list varies, and it has a good balance between online and offline achievements - getting the full 1000 will be no walk in the park. One thing that drastically reduces the score here is that the difficulty achievements (Normal and Hard) are not stackable, so you'll have to run through the campaign twice! 41/100
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